The two boys glared at each other across the vitreous reflector.
Smmek and Dedsi.
Their hatred for each other was tangible, a choking smog of avarice and scorn bubbling through the piped atmosphere.
Sworn enemies at the academy, a brutal altercation in the breeding zone, the latest in a litany of violent clashes, had lead them here, the terrible trial by combat ordained by the high authority ruling over Server City.
Only one shall live.
The combat method: Dissolver.
Invented in the lightless nights of the isolation age, Dissolver was the first and most lethal of all kill platforms where players destroyed each other in both the digital and real worlds.
The game allowed players to stalk and launch surprise attacks with cybernated corrosive programs. In other words, acid.
Dissolver had been adopted by the penal force ten years earlier and after many successful fatal bouts it was now the default wet dispatch for intractable feuds among the elite's warring children.
Since the dissolution of the charities the rich and powerful of Server City had grown ever more wealthy, decadent and greedy. Gated skirmishes were commonplace and in the exclusive cloud schools, were the richest offspring were reared, vendettas festered and feuds boiled over as the rarefied clans fought for the highest table, the rotunda, where all data everywhere was siphoned.
Smmek and Dedsi were from opposing clans and their age-sunk argument was now without reason or hope, the longest and darkest of quarrels to besmirch the golden drives of the servers.
They now sat facing each other through the latent screen, their bodies encircled by plush velvets in the player pods, their fingers poised above bristling glass controls.
The clan heads watched from luxuriant seats behind their boys, encouraging them to ever greater acts of violence and cruelty, the rotunda glistening high above in the silicon steeple like a sizzling steak within their grasp.
Smmek struck first.
He had pounced on Dedsi within the game, a bloody pounding ensuing, where inside the blizzard of integers, a deadly button was pressed releasing a gout of cyber-acid over Dedsi's back.
He screamed on the monitor and real flesh smoked inside the gaming pod from where restrained whimpering could be heard by the wine-swilling clan heads.
"Yes! Kill that sickly fucker," bellowed one.
"Destroy the little Deds bastard!" cried another.
Dedsi ignored his enemies' jibes and rallied his strength for a terrible repost. He sprang up from the floor and leaping high into the air he sprayed Smmek's head with the heinous corrosive.
Smmek was dreadfully injured. His scalp began to dissolve both on-screen and in the real world, lumps of bloodied hair falling away onto the steel tiles beneath his console and spreading out when they landed.
He roared and his oval seat rocked with his raging.
"You will die Dedsi! Die!"
Smmek mustered his resources and pelted down the unlit ginnel disappearing into the shadows by the videodrome, where he waited, nursing his scolded skull.
Dedsi knew the move. Smmek was infamous for his sneaky burn and run, a cowardly strike egged on by his egregious kin.
Twisting and turning like a pythoned fox, Dedsi flipped along the dusky substrate when he finally came to the unlit corner where he felt Smmek was waiting.
He stopped and instantly back flipped, missing a jet of acid erupting from the darkness, which shot over his abdomen and safely passed into the beyond.
Using his advantage, Dedsi suddenly sprang forward emitting a multiple blast of biting juiced light directly into the black where he sensed Smmek was crouched.
The acid struck and in the bated games hall a blood-curdling shriek arose from Smmek's pod. Smoke filled the air and the player stumbled out of his seat falling to the tiles. Clutching his head his face began to corrode and peel away exposing the white bones beneath.
It was a fatal strike and the screaming Smmek slumped down, his face completely burned away.
Before their boy had even died his disgraced clan stood and quickly left the hall.
Smmek's hand was still outstretched imploring them to help him as his short life expired on the steel floor.
Dedsi smiled and walked away.
